cover image Amazing Grace: Smith Island and the Chesapeake Watermen

Amazing Grace: Smith Island and the Chesapeake Watermen

Bernard Wolf. MacMillan Publishing Company, $14.95 (76pp) ISBN 978-0-02-793330-7

It's hard to decide which of Wolf's talents is greaterhis writing or his photography. This portrait of a fragile, out-of-the-way island and its crab scrapers evokes tremendous feeling: Wolf's sun rises ""pink and bloated,'' and somehow the shot reflects just that, though it's in black and white. Readers glimpse the difficult process of bringing the luscious seafood to market, along with aspects of growing up, going to church, communing with nature in a very different kind of communityone that is comparatively poor yet idyllic. Wolf admirably conveys his admiration for Smith Island throughout. (10-up)